Wherever You Will Go
by Chrmdpoet
Summary: Regina sacrifices her own happiness for that of Emma's and Henry's, realizing in their final goodbyes at the edge of Storybrooke, that she was losing the truest family she had ever known. A year later, though, Regina finds her way back to them in the hopes that they might remember her, in the hopes of sharing their happy ending. Based on 3x11. Spoilers inside. One-Shot.


**A/N: My version of the final moments of 3x11 "Going Home" and the events that followed.**

**Please try it out with my chosen soundtrack of "Wherever You Will Go" by The Calling, which greatly inspired this one-shot. I hope you all enjoy. XO-Chrmdpoet**

Wherever You Will Go

Regina swallowed thickly as her eyes began to water mercilessly. She could feel the stares of the small crowd gathered at the town line, the way their gazes bore into her back as she spoke to the Savior one final time. She could only imagine their thoughts in that moment after hearing her offer a happy ending rather than promise to cut one away. Yes, Regina could only imagine their bewilderment as she sucked in a breath to give her courage and reached for Emma's hand, but she found that she truly did not care.

Not now. Not when their world was literally falling apart around them. Not when Emma's eyes were so deep and so bright as they pleaded with her for answers, for a hope she knew she could only provide at the expense of her own happiness.

She cradled Emma's hand between her own, hoping that that one small gesture might be enough to communicate silently how very much she cared about this maddening woman who had blasted into her life like a natural disaster intent on tearing down all her walls.

And she had.

Emma Swan had not simply weaseled her way past Regina's defenses. She had smashed through them like a wrecking ball, all violence and beauty, and had slowly pieced her back together; had reminded her of whom she once had been so many aching years prior. Regina had always found herself rather infuriated at the mere thought.

Until now.

It was such a strange fact of life, Regina thought, to never truly learn the rhythm of your own heart until you were forced to, until you were faced with the possibility of silence.

She was facing that silence now, silence from the rhythm that was Henry, that was Emma, in her life and in her heart.

So, Regina bit through her pride, and she held Emma's hand in front of everyone. She stroked her thumb in small circles atop the back of it, wishing the barrier of their gloves wasn't there; wishing she could feel that final connection the way a final connection was truly meant to be felt—warm, tender…flesh to flesh.

Emma was looking at her like she understood, like maybe she could hear all the things Regina left unsaid or maybe she even echoed them. Either way, their tears were quiet echoes of the other's, their faces perfect parallels in the salted moisture that haunted their cheeks.

And in that moment, all the world seemed to fizzle and fade around them until nothing existed but that timid stroke of Regina's thumb across Emma's hand and the tremor in Regina's voice as she made a promise unlike any she had ever made to another in her entire life.

"My gift to you," she said softly, holding tightly to Emma's hand as if it were an anchor to keep her from drifting away on the current of her heartache, "is good memories."

Emma's eyes widened even as they hazed over with a fresh wave of tears. Regina shook Emma's hand gently and pressed on, forcing the words from her mouth, forcing her mind to focus so that she wouldn't simply fall apart as her soul ached to do.

"A good life for you," she promised, before turning to reach for her son with one hand, "and Henry." She laced her fingers through Henry's and kept Emma's cradled in the other.

Regina couldn't deny the way her heart pulsed with her pain in that moment as realization struck her fully and forcefully—this was her family, Emma and Henry. She was losing her family, and the moment that that looming cloud of smoke engulfed her and carried her back to the place she once called home, Regina knew she would have no one.

There was no one left to call her own. Her father, her mother, her son…and Emma…

She would truly be alone.

Regina choked on the next lines, but she pushed them through anyway. She could do this, she told herself. This one truly great act, a gift of happiness unlike any she herself had ever known.

"You'll have never given him up," she whispered, and she watched as Emma sucked in a trembling gasp of surprise before fresh tears spilled down the blonde's cheeks to echo her own. She knew such a promise was something that Emma had always wanted, something that Emma had always wondered about. This, she could provide. This, she would do out of kindness, and out of love.

"You'll have always been together," she promised.

Regina was completely captivated by the sheer awe she saw in Emma's emerald eyes then, by the reverence in her tone as the blonde whispered, "You'd do that?"

Her heart clenched tightly in her chest as she fought to rein in her emotions. The words that bubbled up in her throat were not the words she spoke, but she felt them all the same as they rocketed through her very soul in that moment…_you know I would, for you, for Henry. _

Instead, she promised Emma that when the curse washed over her and the others, when Emma and Henry made it safely away from Storybrooke, the fated Savior would finally have the life she had always wanted.

"It won't be real," Emma whispered to her.

Regina hadn't the heart to tell her that it would be; at least, in a sense, and so she merely said, "Your past won't, but your future will be."

Regina pressed her lips quickly to her son's temple, unable to hold onto him any longer without refusing to let go, and she took her final steps away from the two people who had come to mean more to her than any others.

And when that billowing purple smoke curled around her body, she fought to keep her eyes open. She fought to hold on as long as she could, to watch that yellow Bug disappear on that lonely road, and as she did, she used her magic to reach out to Emma Swan one final time and to the son who would only ever know her as a fictional villain in a children's story.

She used her magic to paint a portrait in Emma's mind, a depiction of moments she herself had once known. Regina wanted to provide Emma and Henry with the truest, most precious memories she could, and thus, she gave them her own.

She taught Emma's mind to know the weight of Henry's sleeping infant form against her chest. She taught it to know the soft sound of his first real giggle. She taught it to know the lullabies she once had sung to soothe him. She gave Emma all of Henry's firsts exactly as she had lived them, manipulating them only to fit Emma's own life. She gave her their precious moments and even some of their more conflicted moments. She gave her the pieces that Emma had always been lacking, and she hoped that it would truly lead to her son's best chance and to Emma's happy ending.

As that distant yellow Bug became not more than a speck in her vision, Regina closed her eyes and finally gave herself over to the rolling fog.

And in a breath, Storybrooke and the life she had created there were gone.

* * *

_*One Year Later*_

Regina's hand trembled terribly as she reached for the silver handle of the apartment building's entrance door. She pulled it open and slipped inside, instantly noticing the large collection of small metal mailboxes bolted to the wall to her left just inside the foyer. With some trepidation, she stepped over to search the small white-paper tags taped to them.

Her heart shot into her throat and stuck there painfully as she read the tag attached to the mailbox marked _8A. _She perfectly recognized the heavy scrawl that read _E. Swan, _and it only made her stomach clench and tighten, the reality of the moment truly sinking in.

She had been searching quite some time to find the woman who once had completely changed her life, the woman she had never been able to forget—the other mother of her son, Emma. She had been spent the better part of two months looking, wanting only to discover that her beloved son, Henry, and his other mother were okay, were well, were…happy, even if without her. When she found them, though, found their address, she realized she could not merely walk away. She had to see them, had to hear their voices.

She had to try.

* * *

The return to the Enchanted Forest had been a difficult one. It was as if the Curse had never been cast. They even reappeared in the clothing they had been wearing the day of their departure to the new world, and every bit of it was a cold reminder of the dark woman Regina had left behind some thirty years prior; the enraged woman who had spent a lifetime in Storybrooke growing and healing and learning to love again. It was a quiet, tortured return in which the hearts of those around her echoed her pain in various ways.

Their silent lament seemed to envelop the very forest around them.

Whatever fragments of peace had come of their final goodbyes, though, were quickly obliterated as they faced the reality of their circumstances. They were no longer the rulers of the realm, and they came to face a great threat in a witch from a distant, foreign realm, a witch whose darkened heart overshadowed Regina's own—Elphaba, the green-fleshed wicked witch of the Land of Oz.

Many died at her hands as she reigned over the Enchanted Forest, as she gleefully wreaked havoc throughout the realm. Elphaba had taken up residence in Regina's former castle, and she had seen Regina's return as a direct threat. Thus, she had immediately sought to destroy her, but the former Evil Queen was not without the will to live. Despite having lost all she held dear, Regina somehow was unable to let go of the tiny shred of hope tangled around her heart—the hope that she might see her son again someday, that she might see Emma...that they might somehow come to know her again.

Much blood was shed and many hearts were torn by the loss of loved ones in the battle against Elphaba. Regina herself, at one point, had even come close to death but was saved by the only true friend she believed she had ever known—Tinkerbell. And it was with Tink's help that Regina found a way to banish the wicked witch back to the Land of Oz with no hope of return.

The first few months following had been dedicated to the convalescence of the people as many were nursed back to health and those lost were properly mourned. Regina, though, had only continued to wither, her heart so swollen with her grief that it hardly fit within the confines of her chest anymore. She felt so achingly tired, so terribly alone, so bone dry and brittle that she wondered when she might just crumble into dust.

A part of Regina had hoped that upon their return to the Enchanted Forest, they would be stripped of their memories the same way that Emma and Henry would be in their own world, but that hope was dashed quickly for they each remembered. They carried their losses with them every day, every moment.

Regina knew this well. She could hear the subtle tremor in Belle's voice whenever the brunette spoke, no matter the time that had passed. She could see the distance in Charming's eyes, hear the hollowness that had carved itself into Snow's once bright and cheerful tone. She could see the pain in all of them, hear it, feel it…but mostly, she was aware of her own pain.

It had embedded in her flesh, in her blood, and its hold on her felt so full, so eternal, that she knew she would never escape it.

Ten months after their return, three months after the defeat of Elphaba, Snow had approached Regina as she sat silently in the library of the summer palace, her fingers tracing the lines of the letters in a picture. It was a picture drawn into the pages of a storybook, the very one her son had once toted around with him everywhere he went. Her fingertips slid over the smooth cursive lines of purple letters stitched into a white blanket and wrapped around a newly born baby.

Regina had not even noticed the sudden arrival of another soul or the quiet, easy way in which Snow slipped into the seat beside her. They had become something akin to friends in the long months since Storybrooke's destruction, and though their moments were timid and always laced with their history, they were something new; something altogether different, altogether better.

"You didn't tell the whole truth that day, did you?"

Snow's trembling whisper had shaken Regina from her silent reverie and pulled her back to the heat of the fire and the burning in her chest. She had turned conflicted brown eyes to the raven-haired woman who was both her past and her present, and she had had to force back her tears as she looked into emerald orbs so similar to the ones that now only haunted her dreams. They were Emma's eyes.

"What?" Regina had asked, choking on the simple word.

"That day," Snow had repeated, both of them knowing exactly which day, "you said that you had to give up the thing you loved the most, and of course we all assumed it was Henry, and you said no differently; but, it wasn't _only_ Henry, was it Regina?"

Regina's bottom lip had quivered almost violently as tears built in her chocolate eyes and her throat burned with every breath she sucked in through her nose. She'd wanted to run, wanted to deny everything, but she couldn't.

She was so tired, so tired of hiding; so tired of holding all of that pain and all of that loss inside her. She felt as if she were drowning slowly, constantly kicking and thrashing and desperate to merely get her head above water, but she found she never could. She could never reach that one breath to cleanse her soul and take her pain.

It wouldn't come. Perhaps it didn't even exist.

Regina held Snow's gaze, both of them releasing nearly silent whimpers, wet with their tears, as she had slowly shaken her head back and forth. "No," she'd whispered, the word hardly more than breath as it escaped her.

Regina's gasp was sharp and laced with awe as Snow's hand had suddenly slipped into her own, their fingers lacing together almost of their own accord, and Snow had merely nodded in understanding and acceptance.

They stayed in that moment for what had seemed like hours, somehow finding comfort in one another, and it wasn't until Snow had wordlessly slipped away from her and from the library, that Regina realized the woman had placed something in her hand. She peeled back her fingers and gasped again as there, in the palm of her hand, had sat a small, iridescent bean.

Regina had wanted to go after Snow and grill her with limitless questions, but she hadn't. She hadn't followed Snow. Instead, she had sucked in a heavy breath as that tiny thread of hope that had been fraying over the months suddenly tightened around her heart and gave her courage. It had been the very courage she needed to push herself to a trembling stand and throw that bean to the library floor before she could question herself; before life could strip away her best chance as it had done so many times before.

When the portal opened, swirling green and violent, Regina had actually allowed herself a smile. She'd closed her eyes in that moment and thought only of Emma, of Henry.

And then, she had leapt.

* * *

When Regina appeared in a dirty alley in New York City, she had been utterly terrified, realizing that she had simply jumped into a portal on a whim—a whim of the heart, to be sure, but a whim nonetheless.

She did not have the slightest clue where or how to find Emma and Henry, had absolutely no currency of this world, and was clad in a royal gown. She had moved to flick her wrist and alter her appearance, but was quickly reminded of the lack of magic in this world, a realization that made her stomach churn with fear and anxiety.

Still, she had made it. Emma and Henry were somewhere in the city, and though Regina had felt completely hopeless in that moment, she had also felt rather determined. After all, there was no going back. She could only go forward.

* * *

Regina had truly had to humble herself during her first month in the city. She had never realized, having set herself up so royally in Storybrooke, how difficult it was to live in this world. So much of it revolved around money, and she had none.

Her first night in New York, she had merely wandered the streets, sticking to those that were busiest and brightly lit, and snarling at any who looked at her the wrong way, though many did look at her funny considering her attire. After that first night, though, Regina found herself in need of rest, in need of food.

And that was how Regina Mills ended up in a women's shelter. They had questioned her appearance, her need of a shelter at all, and Regina had even overheard a woman whisper something about the sheer value of her clothing and jewelry alone; and that was when a brilliant idea struck the former queen.

She took a set of simple clothing offered at the shelter, and though it pained her to dress so plainly, she knew it was something she would have to endure for a time. She asked where she could barter or sell jewels and clothing, and she was directed to a well-known pawn shop in the area, known for having a wealthy stock of theatrical costumes.

Regina's eyes had nearly popped out of her skull when the pawn dealer, who was also a private collector of rare and precious jewels as well, offered her twelve thousand dollars for her pair of black-diamond earrings. He offered her another six thousand for the black-diamond pendant on the necklace she had been wearing when she arrived in the city, and when he discovered that the tiny black jewels woven into her gown were real diamonds as well, Regina could have sworn the man was going to pass out. He offered her twenty thousand dollars outright for her gown.

Thus, Regina walked away with nearly forty-thousand dollars, and she could not believe that a single shop, or perhaps the man acted independently, could offer that much money in one transaction. New York City, though, was a wealthy and thriving place, it seemed.

Feeling much more secure, Regina first rented a rather tiny apartment in Brooklyn, where she'd found the prices to be much more affordable. She had been greatly surprised at how little information was required of her in order to rent the apartment. The landlord was a burly man who grunted his words instead of speaking them and had basically told her if she had the money, then he had the apartment, and that was quite fortunate considering Regina had no history in this world.

She had no record of employment, no birth certificate, and no social security number or card. In this world, on paper, she did not even exist.

The second thing she did was go shopping, though she had to severely rein herself in. She bought the bare minimum of furniture, groceries, and a few household necessities; then, it was on to clothing. She could not afford the brands she had once worn in Storybrooke, but she found she didn't mind the cheaper brands as much as she thought she would. She stuck to jeans and sweaters, nice but still affordable, and then she made her way to the first credible salon she could find. Without a thought, she had then shorn away her long locks.

And when Regina gazed at herself in the mirror, for the first time in almost a year, she saw herself as merely Regina again—Regina the Mayor, Regina of Storybrooke…Regina, the mother of Henry.

She didn't explain her tears to the woman cutting her hair, nor did she say anything as she paid for her cut and quickly shot out of the salon.

Once Regina felt as herself again, as the woman she had been for nearly thirty years in Storybrooke, the version of herself she had actually come to like, she began her search.

It was more difficult than she had expected it would be, and she even found herself begrudgingly wishing at times that she'd had some of that Charming blood to make her inevitably skilled at finding people. She was not without a little knowledge, though.

She used a little of what she had learned from her lackey, Sidney, when she had assigned him to a perpetual mission of finding information about the very woman she now desperately wanted to find. She spent much of her time in the public library, using the internet to aid her.

And the first month flew by as she searched various databases to no avail, even those of the many police forces in the city. She thought perhaps Emma would have sought employment in law enforcement, yet her searches came up empty and dead-ended.

Regina kept her rations meager and cycled through four different outfits over and over because she was terrified of running out of money. She knew she would be unable to find employment with no record of existence, no anything to provide that would substantiate her citizenship or her right to work in this country at all, and thus, she kept a severely tight budget.

However, she hadn't a clue as to what she would do when the money she had ran out.

Luckily, though, in the second week of her second month in the city, a mere two weeks from the one-year anniversary of the day she had sacrificed her happiness for that of her son's and his other mother's, Regina finally got a break.

She had changed her tactics and began to search the public school system databases, searching for her son instead of his birthmother. She searched every school roster she could find in every borough of the city for a Henry Mills or a Henry Swan, and she eventually found him.

Henry Swan was a student at a junior high school right there in Brooklyn, a school not too terribly far from where Regina actually lived, which had made Regina's head swim dizzily.

Her heart had hammered madly in her chest as she used one of the public phones available in the library to call the school, and the hammering never ceased as a secretary answered and Regina quickly cleared her throat and tried to make her voice a little lighter than usual.

"Um, yes," she'd said into the phone, "my name is Emma Swan." She started to say she was the mother of one of their students, but quickly bit her tongue and thought of how Emma would speak. She did her best to emulate her son's birthmother as she said, "My kid goes to school there, and we had…uh…a recent change of address. I can't remember if I called and had it changed yet or not, so if you could check for me, that'd be great."

"Of course, Ms. Swan," the secretary had answered, and Regina's stomach knotted at the address, the very name she had spoken so many times in the past. "I just need your child's name, please."

"Henry."

"Okay, just one moment…ah, here it is." Regina listened to the quick clicking of keyboard keys and then the woman on the other end of the line rattled off Emma's address only to follow with a snappy, "Is that the one?"

"Uh, yes, y-yup, that's it," Regina had answered, desperately trying to sound more like Emma and less like herself, though all she really accomplished was a strange mixture of the two.

Regardless, she had finally done it. She'd found her son. She'd found Emma.

* * *

Regina took a deep, steadying breath as she brought a shaky hand up and knocked her knuckles firmly against the beaten wood door of apartment 8A.

Her hands curled into a ball in front of her, her fingers twisting and tangling anxiously, but within seconds she was knocking again, unable to help herself, and when the door wrenched open, all the air fled from Regina's lungs and she had to fight to remain upright.

Regina's teary, chocolate eyes roamed over and absorbed familiar wild blonde locks, a dimpled chin so like Snow's, and those deep emerald orbs that had lived in her dreams for a long, trying year.

Her lips parted and in a reverent choked sigh, she whispered, "Emma."

The blonde, clad in patterned pajamas, simply stared at her. "Uh…yeah," Emma drawled, glancing around behind Regina before letting her emerald eyes take in every inch of the brunette's face, her thin lips parting just slightly.

Regina let Emma stare at her, knowing she was nothing more than a stranger to this woman she had once loathed but had grown to love. And though she was aware of this, it still felt as a jagged shard of glass piercing her heart when the blonde asked, "Do I know you?"

A single tear fell and slipped down one of Regina's cheeks as she knotted her hands together again and pinched the skin of her own palms to keep herself calm and present. She shook her head gently back and forth and whispered, "Not anymore."

Emma's face contorted with confusion as she quirked an eyebrow at Regina and asked, "Uh…meaning?"

"You knew me once," Regina told her honestly. "I know that must sound terribly confusing and perhaps even altogether false, but you know I'm not lying, don't you?"

Those emerald eyes narrowed at her then. "How do you know I know?"

Regina smiled shyly. "As I said, we knew each other once. My name is Regina Mills, and I've come a very long way to find you. I don't want to alarm you or be an inconvenience in any way, but would it be alright if I came in?"

"Well, my son's inside," Emma said, biting her lip for a moment as if contemplating the idea.

Regina's heart stuttered violently in her chest as she realized that she might actually get to see her son in a mere matter of minutes, and that stuttering only grew when Emma let out a sigh and nodded. "I wouldn't normally do this," she said, "but there's something about you that seems kind of familiar to me even though I can't place you. It's bugging the crap out of me."

Regina chuckled lightly as she realized just how deeply she had missed Emma's manner of speaking, her body language, her voice…everything.

She smiled brightly at Emma as she stepped into the apartment, and her breath caught tightly in her throat when her son's voice rang out from the kitchen. "Mom, who was at the door?"

Regina's entire body felt as if it might simply explode at any minute, and the tears that had been dancing on her eyelids spilled forcefully over as she followed Emma around a corner and her gaze fell upon the source of the voice. His voice was deeper, his body leaner, taller, his hair just a tad bit longer; Regina noticed every detail as she soaked in the sight of her son, and all she could think was that he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

She sucked in a heavy breath as Emma motioned toward her and said, "Henry, this is Regina. She's here to talk to me about some stuff, I guess, so why don't you take your breakfast to your room, kid? It shouldn't take long."

"Okay," he said with a shrug as he gave a small wave in Regina's direction, though he hadn't really looked at her yet. When he made to move past her toward his room, though, he stopped suddenly. His eyes roamed over her face and something flashed in them that Regina couldn't quite place.

They locked gazes for what felt like hours before Henry simply shook his head and said, "Uh, sorry, ma'am. You just seem kinda familiar."

"That's what I said," Emma mumbled before shooing Henry away to his room.

Once the door of his bedroom clicked closed, the blonde turned to face Regina once more, and said, "So, how is it that you know me again?"

Regina bit down roughly on her lip and summoned every ounce of her courage in that moment to try something she was not even sure would work but sincerely hoped would. She took a small step toward Emma and whispered, "Forgive me," before closing the distance between them, slipping her hand around the back of Emma's neck, and pulling the blonde's lips to her own.

A warm tingling slipped across her lips in the mere moment she kept them pressed to Emma's, a tingling that traveled through her entire body and lit her on fire, before she felt herself being gently pushed away. "Whoa lady, you can't just—"

Regina's heart crumbled. "I'm…I'm so sorry," she managed to choke out before tearing from the apartment.

It hadn't worked. Regina berated herself mentally. How could she have been so stupid to think it would, to actually _do _such a thing?

Tears spilled freely as she shot down the stairwell, desperate to get away, to get back to her apartment where she could collapse and mourn the loss of her son and his birthmother all over again.

However, as she hit the first landing, a voice rang out from above her.

"Regina!" Emma's voice shouted, the blonde slamming through the door to the stairwell and nearly jumping down an entire flight. "Regina, wait!"

Regina whirled on the spot, her hands going up in a show of surrender. "Please, I'm sorry," she began. "I don't know what—"

A slim finger pressed to her lips, effectively silencing her and tearful chocolate eyes traveled up to meet once more with emerald. Regina gasped thickly as she saw recognition in those precious gems even as they were peeled wide with shock and brimming with tears.

Before she could say anything, before she could ask, Emma was pulling her into a tight embrace.

A strangled sob escaped her as Regina let Emma's scent wash over her. Her arms shakily rose to wrap around a quivering body that seemed so familiar and yet so foreign. She had longed so many times to embrace the woman, and yet it had taken nearly losing her entirely to actually accomplish it.

She felt Emma's nose nuzzle into her hair and against her neck, and it caused tingles to erupt along the length of her spine. Regina sobbed openly against the blonde's shoulder, and in that precious moment she was convinced she must be dreaming. That was, until Emma's trembling whisper reached her ears.

"Regina." Her name was a flood of new beginnings. "I remember."


End file.
